"Derry tonight. Absolute madness"
April 19, 2019 7:38 AM   Subscribe

 
(This is heartbreaking.)

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posted by gudrun at 7:49 AM on April 19, 2019 [3 favorites]


Watching Derry Girls a couple weeks ago, the series ending was such an appropriate gut-punch, bringing back all the horror of the shockingly-recent past. And now again, but for real. What a disaster.
posted by the christopher hundreds at 7:56 AM on April 19, 2019 [10 favorites]


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posted by praemunire at 7:59 AM on April 19, 2019


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posted by valkane at 8:00 AM on April 19, 2019


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posted by recklessbrother at 8:00 AM on April 19, 2019


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posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:00 AM on April 19, 2019


Thank you for this post.

And . for Lyra McKee.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:02 AM on April 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


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It’s hard not to feel enraged about this utter waste. Not that she or her incredible work were in any way a waste, just that her death is such a clearly bad thing for people beyond her loved ones—a bad thing for her country and for the world. Believing in the just cause of a united Ireland as much as I do, I still have nothing but absolute disgust for people who think violence is any kind of proper solution. She was killed by immature idiots playing at being revolutionary.
posted by sallybrown at 8:11 AM on April 19, 2019 [22 favorites]


Dissident republican activity has been increasing of late, with police in Northern Ireland fearful of a spate of violent incidents marking the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising.

I'm sure Brexit threatening to wreck the Good Friday agreement doesn't help either.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:13 AM on April 19, 2019 [35 favorites]


. For Lyra.
Horrific but in no way totally surprising.
It is not a cheap point to link the upsurge in violence – partly – on Brexit. The possibility of a hard border on the island of Ireland is something that inflames passions that not enough people on the eastern side of the Irish Sea, especially a new generation of British Tory politicians, sufficiently understand.
If and when Brexit violence and death occured it was always, I am sad to say, going to start in N. Ireland..
Westminster gives not an iota about NI.
Never did. Never will.
Westminster is only about power whatever the "collateral damage ".
More blood for the right wing to be held responsible for. They might not have pulled the trigger but they sowed the field for the hatred to re explode.
posted by adamvasco at 8:22 AM on April 19, 2019 [28 favorites]


It's been a little unclear - some articles say the shooters were firing indiscriminately, but then describe McKee as standing next to a police vehicle when she was shot. I'm hoping more details will be made public.

Also, I hope they are very transparent with the investigation. As McKee's own article says

Many murders during the Troubles were carried out by double agents, members of paramilitary groups who were secretly working for British intelligence as informers.

Regardless, this is a great tragedy.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 8:31 AM on April 19, 2019 [6 favorites]


People also forget that a majority of the stalling around the NI/Ireland border is in part due to hardliner DUP's being what is giving Theresa May the majority, not just the Tories. While it may be the New IRA that is acting violently in the streets, the political power and political violence is being caused in part by the right wing Unionist group that currently is making Brexit possible.

Northern Ireland's Parliament has been vacant pretty much since the Brexit vote, so things are lot less stable there than it would seem, and the New IRA group isn't operating in a vacuum, reacting in an insane way to an otherwise sane political landscape.
posted by mrzarquon at 8:35 AM on April 19, 2019 [14 favorites]


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posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:37 AM on April 19, 2019


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posted by acb at 8:47 AM on April 19, 2019


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posted by bilabial at 8:52 AM on April 19, 2019


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posted by lalochezia at 8:54 AM on April 19, 2019


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posted by lazaruslong at 8:55 AM on April 19, 2019


Susan McKay's article is particularly devastating. She was a friend of McKee's—they'd been planning to meet up this weekend.
posted by rory at 9:18 AM on April 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


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posted by aw jeez at 9:27 AM on April 19, 2019


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With this new violence in Northern Ireland and multi-day protests like the Extinction Rebellion in London, the UK's going to have a messy rioting season this year.
posted by scruss at 9:34 AM on April 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


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posted by socialjusticeworrier at 9:35 AM on April 19, 2019


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posted by soren_lorensen at 9:41 AM on April 19, 2019


Prime Minister Theresa May said the killing was "shocking and senseless" “something I and my party are significantly responsible for”.

FTFY — oh, I kid; May would never admit that or, possibly, realize it.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:45 AM on April 19, 2019 [8 favorites]


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Irish Times - Lyra McKee a ‘fearless seeker of truth’: fellow writers pay tribute

Paraic O'Donnell doesn’t mince words:
‘The violence causes silence’ – ‘Zombie’, by The Cranberries, gave us one of the most dreadful rhymes in rock music, and one of its starkest truths. When a journalist is murdered, as Lyra McKee was, we see the dark corollary of this truth, the viciousness of the circle. In the North, as she knew better than most, it was never a secret. The Provos used to put it on their trashy posters, next to a sniper in a gimp mask and baggy army surplus: ‘Whatever you say, say nothing.’

In the North, the silence isn’t even silent. It’s violence taking you aside, wanting a word with you. It’s violence saying the quiet part out loud.

And when a journalist is murdered, as Lyra McKee was, our instinct is to honour her first, to light candles, not curse the darkness. It’s borne of decency, this instinct, and it’s right as far as it goes. We should give her every honour, and we will. But we shouldn’t make the mistake, when people like these come for a person like her, of refusing to mention them, of mistaking silence for decorum. She was a journalist, and the work she was doing is the opposite of silence. If we want to honour her, we have to keep breaking it.

So, let’s talk about this, as we honour Lyra McKee. It can seem impenetrably nuanced, even to well-informed outsiders. There can be doubts about where our sympathies lie. So, let’s get a few things straight. The Provos – the Provisional IRA – at least had a halfway complicated Venn diagram, but they were still a creepy death cult with a nucleus of straight-up monsters. These people, whatever they’re calling themselves this week, don’t even rise to that level. Some of them are connected – maybe an uncle who killed a pregnant woman with a bomb, or a cousin in Monaghan with a slurry tank full of Semtex – but most of them are just skanky crims with coke habits and notions. Whoever murdered Lyra McKee didn’t do it for a cause. He did it for a name and a percentage; a front seat on the next ATM job, a stint down south until the heat is off, and maybe a slice of some Charlie action in Blanchardstown. I hope he’s locked up six months from now, but if he’s not he’ll be shifting knock-off fags and Instagramming his Glock for the lads.

Lyra McKee was one of us. She was our people. She didn’t think she was, not at first – Belfast isn’t the easiest place in the world to grow up gay – but she found a way to belong here, a way to tell her story. She was our people because that includes a lot now, and it included her. It’s not like it used to be. But it doesn’t include them, not any more. Whatever you say, say that.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 9:50 AM on April 19, 2019 [58 favorites]


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To those who witness, and justice.
posted by spitbull at 9:57 AM on April 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


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posted by gyusan at 10:19 AM on April 19, 2019


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posted by Foosnark at 10:27 AM on April 19, 2019


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Not directly related to McKee but as an American, this interview released earlier in the week: “The Ghosts of a Dirty War” (~1hr audio), with author Patrick Radden Keefe by U.S. television journalist Chris Hayes, an episode of his podcast Why Is This Happening?, filled in a great deal of the context of the Troubles and more recent history which I hadn't grasped before.
posted by XMLicious at 10:40 AM on April 19, 2019 [5 favorites]


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for Lyra, and for her partner and family.

And for all the people killed and wounded here recently who didn’t get a FPP.

I work as a therapist with victims of the Troubles and you know I just wrote out a comment and then deleted it because what’s the point. There is so much stuff happening here and now and then something will be big enough to make waves and the rest of the time no one cares.

I’m so sorry Lyra is another headline story that’ll be forgotten soon. She deserved so much better.
posted by billiebee at 11:05 AM on April 19, 2019 [40 favorites]


Gerry Adams was quick to disavow responsibility, with only a minor technical glitch.
posted by Leon at 11:52 AM on April 19, 2019 [6 favorites]


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posted by Etrigan at 12:11 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by norabelle at 12:22 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by eirias at 1:51 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by bonobothegreat at 2:25 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by Barack Spinoza at 3:22 PM on April 19, 2019


A recent article on Derry from NYRB. Re Brexit: "...this is just going to tear us all further apart.”
posted by CCBC at 3:37 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by tychotesla at 3:58 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by ppl at 4:33 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by blurker at 5:54 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by introp at 7:08 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by Halloween Jack at 8:52 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by anadem at 9:48 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by Lesser Spotted Potoroo at 10:40 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 11:09 PM on April 19, 2019


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posted by bryon at 11:27 PM on April 19, 2019




The current violence is 100% to do with brexit, there is no partly about it. The DUP have the English governments ear and that won't end well, it's no secret.
posted by fshgrl at 2:45 AM on April 20, 2019


Two teen aged boys have been arrested for her murder.
posted by Bee'sWing at 4:58 AM on April 20, 2019 [2 favorites]


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posted by Coaticass at 5:01 AM on April 20, 2019


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posted by iboxifoo at 9:52 AM on April 20, 2019


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posted by spinifex23 at 12:09 PM on April 20, 2019


Her tutor on a journalism MA wrote a memorial (SLMedium). I watched the video of her talk about crowdfunding investigative journalism halfway through that page and her passion and eagerness to write and talk to the world just shines through. We've lost someone important and these islands are much the poorer for losing her and the truths she would've given to them as well as to Northern Ireland.

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posted by ambrosen at 3:40 PM on April 20, 2019 [1 favorite]


And this nonsense parade today in Dublin. Who let this happen?
posted by recklessbrother at 6:10 PM on April 20, 2019


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posted by daybeforetheday at 6:47 PM on April 20, 2019


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posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:28 AM on April 21, 2019






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